Second "Day Off"

Monday 15th September was blowy.

From my 5 years (or so) experience working in markets, one of the hard-earned take-aways was that us humans hate the wind. Worse than rain for sales. It turns us into scaredy-cat wide-eyed prey animals. Instead of perusing the wares, when it's windy, the punters are just looking around for things that might fall on them or whack them in the face.

So yesterday I had no plans on opening up the gallery. Nor did I make plans to work on the construction of the boat. I had started to feel a little bit under the weather from a big day on Saturday (roof, gallery, pub), so I tried to allow myself a little rest.

At 1030hr I picked up a single bed from Golders Green which turned out to be a child's bed. I may tinker with it to extend it. Bit annoying but my philosophy is that you never know what you're getting with FreeCycle until you get it. Only so much can be conveyed by people's photos and description.

Strapped it to the roof and drove to storage. When I got there I realised I'd agreed to go and pick up a pair of sofa cushions to use as a dog bed for a little dog called Ellie that I'm planning on taking care of.

Over lunchtime I wrote an 'About' section for a display on the side of the boat. The first draft is below:

For the people who have helped build the boat, I decided not to mention you in this 'about' section because I wanted to keep it simple. That is another take-away from my time working in markets - keep everything as simple as possible. People have no idea who you are or what you're doing. They also would rather not be reading, so it should be as basic as possible. You (the volunteers) are obviously highly valued and an essential part of the project both in terms of utilitarian (wo)man-power and meaning. But for the display it's all 'me, me, me!'.

In the afternoon I went to Haringey to pick up a solid wood cabinet for the boat. My god is that fucker heavy. I made the mistake of taking it myself from the parking spot 800m away from the boat. I carried it alone, having to put it down every 25 yards to have a minute or so rest. It felt like a strong man event. As I was panting and straining, I looked around and there were endless people milling about with coffees and people laughing and eating food at picnic benches. Meanwhile, I was struggling like mad.

Nobody came to help me.

I know they didn't have to but it would've been nice! I was actually getting a bit annoyed. There were plenty of able-bodied men who could've lent a hand. But they didn't. They were too busy sipping on their turmeric lattes. Fuckers.

I eventually got the beast onto the boat. My blue foldaway chair had been blown off the side of the boat and now sits at the bottom of the canal. It looks quite good under the water. I'll fish it out when I can be arsed.

The next job was to take back the two ladders. I took them both to the car and started loading them. It took me about 20 minutes. Ridiculous. I don't think it's because I'm an idiot. Because of the nature of the two shapes, every which way you try to strap them down, something goes wrong. I tried four or five iterations before I was happy and felt it was safe to rip around corners.

I would love to present the 'two ladders on the roof' challenge to my friends. It represents something important to the whole experience of this process: quiet impossible moments with zero glory.

I had the rest of the day off and had some wine. It went down a treat. God bless the French.